
The first federal executions during a president's lame-duck period in over a century have turned attention to how President-elect Joe Biden's administration will handle the death penalty. The high-profile case of Brandon Bernard — one of five gang members convicted in the murders of two youth ministers in 1999 — sparked national interest over the past few months, as celebrities and politicians railed against his pending execution as part of a larger push to eradicate the death penalty. On Thursday, the Supreme Court denied a petition filed by Bernard's attorneys Alan Dershowitz and Ken Starr, and he was put to death later that evening.

Throughout the hard-hit states of the Upper Midwest and northern Plains — in Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, Montana, Wyoming and the Dakotas — coronavirus case counts have been falling for weeks. When case counts were skyrocketing across the Upper Midwest earlier this fall, the national media was all over the story. Part of that may have been a reluctance to find silver linings in states where infection rates still rank among the highest in the nation (even if they're slowing down) and where hospitalizations and deaths, which lag cases by weeks, still haven't peaked.

In the contentious aftermath of the presidential election, one issue should not be forgotten: the pressing need for police reform. To this end, it may surprise many people that the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives (NOBLE) supports the aims of the Black Lives Matter movement. We also believe that resetting the relationship between police officers and the communities they serve must be a bipartisan effort that is embraced at both the federal and state levels.

DUBAI (Reuters) -Iran's Foreign Ministry summoned Turkey's ambassador on Friday over remarks by Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan during a visit to Azerbaijan, which Tehran said amounted to meddling in its affairs. Erdogan recited an Azeri-Iranian poem about the division of Azerbaijan's territory between Russia and Iran in the 19th century. Tehran appeared concerned his remarks could fan separatist tendencies among Iran's Azeri minority.

The US is to execute a female federal inmate for the first time in almost 70 years, the Justice Department said. Lisa Montgomery strangled a pregnant woman in Missouri before cutting out and kidnapping the baby in 2004. The last woman to be executed by the US government was Bonnie Heady, who died in a gas chamber in Missouri in 1953, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Pakistan's foreign minister on Friday called for the United Nations and the European Union to investigate a recent report exposing a 15-year disinformation campaign that Islamabad alleges was designed to serve India's interests and discredit Pakistan. The extensive report was published earlier this week by EU DisinfoLab, a Brussels-based nongovernmental organization. The findings detail how 10 defunct but U.N.-accredited NGOs were “revived” in order to influence the EU and the U.N. Human Rights Council.

India will deploy its vast election machinery to deliver 600 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines to the most vulnerable people in the next six to eight months through conventional cold chain systems, the expert leading the initiative said on Friday. The government has lined up cold storage facilities with temperatures between 2 to 8 degrees Celsius (36 to 48°F), said V.K. Paul, who heads the group of experts on vaccine administration for COVID-19 that advises India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Paul said these preparations meet the requirements of what he said were the four emerging candidates in the race for India's vaccine.

Some Republican senators are using their unfounded election fraud claims as an excuse to muddy President-elect Joe Biden's transition. Biden has spent the past few weeks since the election filling out his Cabinet, hoping quick confirmations will help him get a quick start on reversing President Trump's policies. But "as long as there's litigation ongoing, and the election result is disputed, I do not think you will see the Senate act to confirm any nominee," Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) told Axios.

In the hands of Pierre Yovanovitch, the Paris apartment that iconic designer Jean-Michel Frank once called home gets a spectacular new lease on life Originally Appeared on Architectural Digest

Studies of Pfizer's coronavirus vaccine showed no major safety concerns, and regulators at the US Food and Drug Administration cleared the shot on Friday for emergency use. The vaccine is highly effective and safe, based on a clinical trial of more than 40,000 participants. There were temporary side effects that are generally expected with most vaccines.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel will discuss with state leaders on Sunday tightening lockdown restrictions to stem a rise in coronavirus infections, with school and shop closures on the agenda, according to people familiar with the matter. Germany has been in partial lockdown for six weeks, with bars and restaurants closed. Germany, which has Europe's largest economy, was more successful than many European countries in keeping the pandemic under control in the first wave in March and April.

The conservative-controlled Wisconsin Supreme Court agreed on Friday to hear arguments over the weekend on President Donald Trump's state lawsuit seeking to disqualify more than 221,000 ballots and overturn his loss to Democrat Joe Biden in the battleground state. The court's decision to take the case, and to hear arguments on Saturday, came hours after a lower court judge ruled against Trump and said there was nothing illegal about the election or subsequent recount in the state's two largest counties. The highly unusual Saturday arguments will come exactly 48 hours before Monday's scheduled Electoral College vote.

NEW DELHI (Reuters) -Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi assured farmers on Saturday that reforms in the agrarian sector were aimed at helping them as thousands of farmers continued protests against three new laws to overhaul procurement and sale of produce. "Reforms will help draw investment in agriculture and benefit farmers," he said at the annual meeting of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry in New Delhi. "The aim of the all government reforms is to make farmers' prosperous," he said adding that private sector must help improve the country's agriculture sector.

Trump has been clinging to baseless claims of fraud in the hope of reversing election results that made Democrat Joe Biden the next president and deprived Trump of four more years in the White House. For all Trump's predictions that the court and his justices would make things right, he and his supporters were lacking one basic element: a strong legal argument that might plausibly attract some sympathy on a court now dominated by conservative justices. A Republican senator, Nebraska's Ben Sasse, delivered a stinging summary of the court's rebuke to Trump and his allies.

Olivier Conan didn't see how it was going to work, keeping Barbès, his Brooklyn bar/performance space, open through the pandemic when live performances and crowded spaces have been at the top of the DON'T list. The months of pandemic have meant nothing but change for the city's restaurant and bar owners, who have had to deal with limits to what kind of service they could offer, how many people could be inside when indoor dining was allowed to return, and how to adjust to the rise of outdoor dining. Wade Hagenbart has closed down a restaurant he had just opened in late 2019, as well as Angry Wade, a Brooklyn bar he started 20 years ago, leaving him with his Gueros restaurant focusing on takeout.
President Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani provides insight into the strongest piece of evidence he will present for legal challenge.

Republicans are signaling that they won't support the $908 billion bipartisan coronavirus relief plan. The plan was intended to be a compromise between Democrats and Republicans after months of deadlock over how much should be spent and on what. Democrats have dismissed the White House's alternative proposal in favor of working on the bipartisan one, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has suggested that negotiations could continue after Christmas.

Global fund managers are reducing their holdings in U.S-listed Chinese companies such as Alibaba, Netease and JD.com as risks grow they will be forced off American exchanges, switching instead into shares of the companies listed in Hong Kong. Delisting risks surfaced last September, when U.S. President Donald Trump's administration explored moves to kick Chinese companies off Wall Street unless they abide by U.S. accounting standards, part of an escalating standoff between the world's top two economies. The Holding Foreign Companies Accountable Act has been passed by both Chambers of the U.S. Congress and should soon be signed into law by Trump.

He also failed to convince state lawmakers in states he lost like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia to certify their own separate slates of Trump electors. It means Monday will lack the drama of competing slates of electors casting votes, spoiling a dubious legal strategy pursued by the Trump team. "We've seen pretty clear signals from state legislators that's not going to happen," said Rebecca Green, director of William and Mary School of Law's election law program.

A lone senator from Utah has singlehandedly blocked the bipartisan approval of two new national museums to honor American Latinos and women, arguing that “last thing we need is to further divide an already divided nation.” Republican Sen. Mike Lee objected Thursday to the creation of the two proposed Smithsonian museums, stalling two projects that have been in the making for decades and enjoy broad bipartisan support. Senate approval would have sent the legislation approving the Latino museum to President Donald Trump for his signature.

Virgin Galactic is set to carry out a milestone test flight of its rocket-powered tourist plane on Saturday. This will be the first crewed flight of its reusable Unity vehicle to take off from the purpose-built commercial spaceport in New Mexico, US. Sir Richard Branson's company will begin space tourism flights in 2021.

President Donald Trump lambasted the Supreme Court on Saturday for declining to take a case he hoped would overturn President-elect Joe Biden's election victory and called Attorney General William Barr a "disappointment." The decision comes ahead of a meeting by the U.S. Electoral College on Monday to make Democrat Biden's victory official. Trump, a Republican, has refused to concede despite losing to Biden, who took 306 votes to Trump's 232 in the state-by-state Electoral College, which allots votes to all 50 states and the District of Columbia based on population.

Turkey on Saturday summoned the Iranian ambassador to Ankara over Iran's “aggressive” reaction to the Turkish president's recitation of a poem on a visit to Azerbaijan, which Tehran deemed to support a secession of Azeri ethnic parts of Iran. The diplomatic spat between neighbors Iran and Turkey began earlier this week when Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who strongly backs Azerbaijan, read parts of a poem during a parade in the Caucasian country's capital of Baku. The verses that Erdogan read included lines about how a border tore apart ancient Azeri, or Azerbaijani, lands “by force.

A Virgin Galactic test flight Saturday ended prematurely as the spacecraft's rocket motor failed to ignite and it then glided down safely to its landing site in southern New Mexico. The hourlong flight was the first from Virgin Galactic's new headquarters at Spaceport America, a futuristic desert outpost where the aircraft carrying the spacecraft took off at approximately 8:25 a.m.

President Donald Trump wants a special counsel to investigate unsubstantiated allegations of widespread voter and election fraud related to the 2020 presidential race, The Wall Street Journal reported. Senior White House officials are also said to be interested in the appointment of a special counsel to investigate allegations surrounding President-elect Joe Biden's son, Hunter. Trump's focus on a special counsel comes as federal judges across the country, as well as the Supreme Court, reject dozens of Republican legal challenges seeking to overthrow the election results.


“The prospect of a 2024 run is politically significant. It’s also a complete fiction.”
“His flirtation with a 2024 bid ensures he’ll remain the dominant force in the Republican Party.”
“He shouldn’t run for president again. There’s a better job and life for him on the horizon.”
“Trump is in for years of scandals and humiliations…He’ll have to devote much of his energy to trying to stay out of prison.”
“If Trump himself passes on the opportunity, his two very political children could also potentially pick up the mantle.”